Man charged in deadly Loudoun County fire is connected to powerful Russian mob boss

A man accused of igniting a deadly Loudoun County house fire has ties to a Russian mob boss who was previously on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Virginia authorities have charged Jacob Bogatin, 78, with intentionally setting the three-alarm fire on Oct. 24 that ripped through two townhomes and damaged a third on the 20000 block of Riptide Square in Sterling.

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said 36-year-old Madelaine Samantha Akers was trapped inside her home as the overnight fire raged. Firefighters found her remains in the wreckage.

Police said Mr. Bogatin was spotted on surveillance cameras in the area where the fire was started. He also had a lighter and flammable liquid in his car when he was arrested Oct. 28.

Mr. Bogatin faces murder and arson-related charges in the fire that destroyed two homes. The suspect remains behind bars as he awaits his January court date.

Charging documents revealed that Mr. Bogatin, who lived in an end unit on the strip of townhomes, had been in foreclosure. Prosecutors said he filed an insurance claim that was more than double what was owed on his residence a day after the fatal blaze.

This is not the first time Mr. Bogatin has been implicated in a major crime. In 2002, the suspect faced RICO charges after he was accused of taking part in an international fraud scheme in which one of his codefendants was notorious Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich.

U.S. and European officials describe Mogilevich as the “boss of all bosses” in the Red Mafia, a Russian mob family with a reputation for being particularly brutal.

Authorities listed contract killings, extortion, weapons and drug trafficking, and prostitution as some of his criminal enterprises operating across the globe.

But the inability to nail him on those offenses led federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania to accuse Mogilevich of inflating the stock price of a supposed Canadian magnet manufacturer throughout the 1990s.

Court documents said Mogilevich was the mastermind of the scheme — which involved various shell companies around the world — and Mr. Bogatin ran the phony magnet company’s location near Philadelphia.

Prosecutors said the alleged co-conspirators defrauded investors out of $150 million. Mogilevich personally pocketed $18 million, according to the court filing, while Mr. Bogatin took home $10 million.

“What makes him so dangerous is that he operates without borders,” former FBI Special Agent Peter Kowenhoven, who worked on Mogilevich’s case, said about the Russian mobster in 2009. “Here’s a guy who managed to defraud investors out of $150 million without ever stepping foot in the Philadelphia area.”

The case against Mogilevich and Mr. Bogatin was progressing toward trial when the mobster and two co-defendants fled the country. Mogilevich has been a fugitive ever since.

The State Department has a $5 million reward for his capture on its website.

He was on the agency’s Most Wanted list from 2009 until 2015, when it was discovered he was living in Moscow. The U.S. doesn’t have an extradition agreement with Russia.

In 2003, Mr. Bogatin was let out of federal custody on bond. His release conditions have been relaxed over time.

WTOP News, which first reported Mr. Bogatin’s connection to mob boss Mogilevich, said Loudoun County authorities have been in contact with federal pretrial officials about the suspect’s charges in the deadly house fire.